Dr Rochelle Woodley-Baker

I joined the University of South Australia in 2002, holding research and teaching positions in the schools of Education, Natural and Built Environments and Management. Alongside my university work I run my own social planning consultancy, which was established in 2000. I photograph and write on community life, social health and education and serve as a social planning consultant to public sector and non-government agencies in South Australia, Bangladesh and India. Upon completing a social planning project (2006) in south-eastern Bangladesh I established the Healthy Communities Foundation Inc. in partnership with DORP (Development Organisation of the Rural Poor). The Foundation supports women and children with schooling and primary health care. I am an executive board member of the International Visual Sociology Association and reviewer for the World Health Organisation Bulletin, Visual Studies and Current Sociology. My research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary in character, spanning the fields of Education, Urban Planning, Development, Ethics and Sustainability. My theoretical and ethnographic work, rooted in sociology and visual methodology is interdisciplinary with applied implications. I believe that bridges should be built between theoretical scholarship and applied practice, developing this in collaborative projects and publications that draw together epistemological fields and visual technologies. I also undertake qualitative studies in an attempt to better understand the fundamental impact of place and socio-economic status, which is often set-aside as variables that can be controlled for, but not influenced. In recent years I have pursued research opportunities in equity of education, investigating the seemingly intractable link between students from low-income families and their greatly reduced educational outcomes compared to their more affluent peers. Because of this, my research has been located in schools and communities characterised by high levels of poverty and difference. 2012 saw the development of research in the area of culturally inclusive planning. The project was an epistemological exploration probing the capacity of multimedia as a mode of enquiry in cross-cultural research within the development of urban policy and practice. 

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Masters of Public Policy Flinders University

• Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Flinders University